


Let your waves crash down on me (and take us both to shore)

by ydididodis



Series: sad rosa all the way [3]
Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Anxiety, Blood, Established Relationship, F/F, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Mention of Amy santiago, PTSD, Panic Attacks, angsty, it’s still fresh but whatever, mention of iggy, so much blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-29
Updated: 2019-01-29
Packaged: 2019-10-18 22:38:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17589740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ydididodis/pseuds/ydididodis
Summary: It’s 1 am on a Tuesday night when Gina Linetti gets a call not quite knowing what awaits her once she ends up at Rosa Diaz’ front door.It’s 12 words but they scare her like nothing has ever before.(plays into post prison Rosa right before “Waking up (and getting up) has never been easy”)





	Let your waves crash down on me (and take us both to shore)

“Can you come get me? I’m... I... Please?” Silence. “I’m at home.” Deafening silence.

* * *

It’s 1 am on a Tuesday night when she gets the call. Gina blindly grabs for her phone, face pressed into her pillow, kind of annoyed at the person that’s waking her up. She’s mumbling a muffled hello and then those words spill out and the line goes dead again.

A second later she gets sent a location.

Without thinking she puts on her shoes, gets her still sleeping daughter, grabs her keys and gets to the car while calling Jake (who is just as annoyed as she was for waking him up, but she called it an ‘emergency’ and every bit of malice left his voice instantly) asking him to pick up her daughter at the location she’ll send him as soon as possible.

The drive couldn’t have been more than a minute or two, but granted, Gina was deep in her own thoughts, obsessing over what could’ve happened. This isn’t her first rodeo. This is not the first panic attack she is going to coach the other woman through. 

Still, this is hell. She thought being assistant manager at the kiosk shop at the mall was it but she was so wrong.

She hopes nothing serious did happen but at the same time she knew that something must have happened or the other woman wouldn’t have called and asked for help. 

It was so not Rosa-stylez, but somehow so much like the freshly-returned-out-of-prison-Rosa she got to know, that it worried her endlessly. 

Not just right now in this very moment but for at least a week or two now.

She never has been _this_ upset before. This tremble in her voice all to unfamiliar but yet... she feels like she got kind of too acquinated with it over the passing weeks. 

And for the love of god she couldn’t get behind the reasons of why the leather wearing detective, self-declared badass of the 99, was this vulnerable. All the signs are pointing to PTSD and anxiety Since she came out of prison. 

But Gina will give her all the time she needs to talk to her, she just is not sure Rosa would ever talk to her about what happened. Or anything related for that matter.

It just stresses her so much to know that Rosa is always on edge and could be sent into a panic attack just like that.

* * *

She finds Rosa’s front door unlocked and that really sends her into a panic.

Rosa NEVER leaves her door unlocked. Ever.

For a second it crosses her mind that Rosa opened the door in anticipation of her and Gina hopes that it was unlocked because of that and not because of - she doesn’t want to think about it.

She lays Iggy on the sofa before calling out for her friend.

(Girlfriend, she thinks. They have been on dates and shared a kiss or twenty and share lunch together and sometimes even hold hands. And they did make it exclusive a few nights ago. She’s shaking her head. Not the right time.)

She hears whimpers coming from the opposite side of the apartment.

“Rosie? Where are you, babe? I’m here”, she calls out, wandering in the direction of the bedroom.

Scanning it with her eyes she realizes Rosa is not there, but there’s light in an attached room.

A room filled with sobs and whimpers and “NO PLEASE! NO!”s.

_“No, por favor, no!”_ is a sentence that comes up way too frequently and Gina got **very** familiar with it over the last couple of weeks, since she found her now girlfriend hiding under the bed and previously to that in her car. 

She’s having a serious déjà-vu right now.

She finally discovers the younger woman, dressed in a black shirt and shorts, exposing her long tan legs and muscular arms. She’s cowered in the tiny space between the toilet and the bathtub. Her head squeezed between her thighs, hugging herself tight with her own arms.

And there’s smears of blood on the tiles surrounding her. Spots blossoming like poppy flowers, and handprints, like someone was clutching the edge of the bathtub tightly.

There’s a lot of blood on her legs as well.

Gina feels her heart rate quickening impossibly. 

Fuck! 

She swallows hard.

“Rosa, baby. Look at me.”, she tries but Rosa just shakes her head while sobbing louder.

“NO! PLEASE!”

The administrator reaches out to her but her arm gets slapped back and the frightened woman seems to press herself even further into the niche.

“STOP! Don’t touch me, please!”

So Gina settles for sitting on the farthest edge of the toilet seat, kind of next to her but still giving her the demanded space.

“Ro, it’s me. Gina. Hey. _Mira, nena, estás a salvo. No voy a lastimarte. Voy a tocar ya sabes. ¿Bueno?_ (Look, babe, you’re safe. I will not hurt you. I’m going to touch you now. Okay?)”

She goes for her hair this time, anticipating another slap.

Instead the scared woman lifts her head slightly for the first time, which prompts Gina to kneel in front of her. And as soon as she’s eye level, she notices the dried blood on Rosa’s cheeks and forehead as well. One half is completely covered in the now partially dry liquid. 

In the span of a few seconds multiple things happen: 

a.) She gasps. “You’re bleeding”, as realization hits her. She thought it might have been an intruder, but it’s just Rosa. Rosa’s fucking blood all over the bathroom and her body. Which doesn’t make the situation any better. 

b.) She realizes that the Latina’s arms are covered in blood as well, though she’s still having a vice grip while hugging herself. 

c.) There’s blood on Gina’s hands as well now.

d.) A voice booms from the living room: “Gines? I’m here! Now why did I have to get up in the middle of the night? You owe me another chit for that.” She knows he’s joking, kind of, but she’s really going to owe him one and she’s already afraid of the outcome of this.

Rosa flinches and squeezes her eyes shut. Gina gives her a kiss on the forehead, accompanied by an “it’s Jake. He’s taking Iggy. I’ll be right back, stay here”, before getting up to get Jake as fast as humanly possible out of there again. She almost forgot about him entirely.

“Hey, Goose. What’s going on?”, he asks.

“I’ll explain later, okay? I just need you to watch Iggy at yours. I know Amy has her day off tomorrow. So basically I want her to watch Iggy. Otherwise I would never trust you with her. Clearly. Please?” She points to the sofa, where, miraculously, Iggy is still sleeping. He stares at her bloody hands and follows the pointing finger to the tiny human. He takes her while nodding wordlessly and looking at her questioningly before turning to the front door and leaving.

She thought this would be way harder than just pointing and pleading.  

* * *

She exhales heavily, not realizing she even held her breath before making her way back to bathroom.

She stops in the kitchen to get her girlfriend something to drink (and to calm herself down) only to notice that there’s shattered glass mixed with blood all over the floor.

Finally returning to the bathroom with a glass of water, she kneels beside Rosa, who is significantly calmer now.

“Here, drink this.”, she orders. Rosa shakes her head though.

“Can’t”, while looking down at her hands. Covered in red liquid. “Hurts like shit.”

So she holds the glass to her girlfriend’s lips and she drinks all of it, before helping her up.

“You realize we have to get that checked out, babe. Right?”, Gina asks while guiding the Latina to her bed, who almost unnoticeably nods in return. The auburn haired woman leaves for a few seconds only to return with black boots in her hand and helps putting them on her, as well as tying them. She hesitates for a moment before taking off her hoodie and helping her girlfriend into it. 

She doesn’t bother cleaning up all the blood from her body, making jokes about how they might be favored in the ER. (Which they do. They get escorted right through. There’s panicked eyes on them all around the room, but Gina couldn’t care less about the attention right now. The blood covered woman next to her is her priority.)

While waiting for a doctor to come check out the mess that is Rosa Diaz, Gina inhales deeply.

“Okay. I know you hate personal stuff. You hate me asking so much and you _hate_ talking but you need to tell me what happened. Okay? You scared the living shit out of me, babe. You can’t go on like this. Hiding and bleeding and being so scared.” (I don’t know how to help you and I’m so worried about you, she wants to add.)

Rosa averts her gaze. She doesn’t want to tell Gina, her girlfriend (oh my god she is gonna panic again) what happened. She can’t. She can’t. She really can’t. 

The room falls silent, just as the doctor enters it. She inspects the deep gashes in both palms and gets the remnants of glass out there, before stitching the wounds up and putting gauze around her hands.

When asked how it happened, Rosa tells the doctor she tried to gather the pieces of a fallen down glass without thinking. And the doctor accepts the story. Mainly because she has to. 

But Gina doesn’t buy her excuse entirely.

* * *

Rosa is high on painkillers by the time they return to Gina’s apartment. She is loopy and drowsy and sad.

(Painkiller-Rosa kind of equals Six-Drink-Amy she concludes.)

She helps her girlfriend undress and into her bathtub, attempting to clean all the blood off her while keeping the bandages dry. The bathtub looks like a crime scene by the time she’s finished and cleansing her face turns out to be a major problem. 

In the end she opts for make up wipes and succeeds, all the while asking herself what exactly happened and what triggered the incident to end in shattered glass and blood, a frantic call and a hospital visit. And why the clearly exhausted woman didn’t answer her and has been avoiding her gaze since then. 

So she asks again. Inquires on what happened. And she doesn’t expect it to spill out of the hurt woman. 

But it does.

She tells her auburn haired girlfriend that a lot of stuff happened in her time in prison and pauses, heaving with sobs, she tries talking about it and chokes. It won’t come out of her mouth. And Gina tells her that it’s okay, she should take her time and she’s sorry she tried forcing it out of her.

She tells her that she heard something on the TV, almost silently running in the background, that brought her back to one particular day. It was similar to something one of the officers on duty said to her. 

That she clenched her hands so hard around the glass that it burst and she had a panic attack before calling Gina. And then another one. More flashbacks.

It’s when she starts talking in Spanish and working herself up more and more and just full on retches in front of her and hyperventilating that Gina climbs in the tub, sitting behind her and hugging her. But not before cleaning her girlfriend up for a second time this night.

(And being weakly threatened with a death sentence not to tell anyone about this.

“There’s the Rosa she knows”, she thinks “still hidden in there.”)

She only understands some words here and there, her Spanish not as fluent and flawless as she thought it to be.

The girlfriends lean more into each other and Rosa is calming down, the painkillers pulling her back down into heaviness and drowsiness.

It doesn’t take long for Rosa to fall asleep.

(They wake up a few hours later because they’re shivering. Gina carries her girlfriend to bed before getting out of her still damp and blood smeared clothing and climbing in herself, covering them both with the duvet.

It takes her a while to fall back asleep again, especially with her passed out girlfriend so close to her. With the soft black locks spilled around her breast and collarbone, Gina’s mind is still going in circles about what might have happened back in prison.

Around 5:30 am sleep seems to finally want to catch up with her but before she lets it wash over her she realizes some things. Sure, she still doesn’t know what exactly happened to Rosa but she knows several other things.

1\. She has never been this scared in her life.

2\. She has to come up with a story to tell Jake

and

3\. She is in love with the woman beside her. (There’s no other reasonable explanation for all the things she’s done tonight.) 

She kisses the crown of her girlfriend’s head before closing her eyes and finally catching up on desperately needed sleep.)


End file.
